The Synthesis Machine

So I go away for a few days, and people are already planning to replace me (and my colleagues) with robots? Can't turn your back on anyone in this business. What that article is talking about is the long-term dream of a "synthesis machine", a device that would take whatever structure you fed into it and start in trying to make it. No such device exists - nothing even remotely close to it exists - but there's nothing impossible about it. A British project called Dial-a-Molecule is laying the groundwork. Led by Whitby, the £700,000 (US$1.2-million) project began in 2010 and currently runs until May 2015. So far, it has mostly focused on working out what components the machine would need, and building a collaboration of more than 450 researchers and 60 companies to help work on the idea. The hope, says Whitby, is that this launchpad will help team members to attract the long-term support they need to achieve the vision. . . . . .Some reckon it would take decades to develop an automated chemist as adept as a human — but a less capable, although still useful, device could be a lot closer. “With adequate funding, five years and we're done,” says Bartosz Grzybowski, a chemist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who has ambitious plans for a synthesis machine of his own. There's a lot of room in between "as adept as a human" and "still useful", let me tell you, and that word "useful" covers a lot of ground all by itself. But I agree that there's a lot of poten...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Chemical News Source Type: blogs